Palestine and Israel

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate all those who have made the case for the recognition of Palestine this evening, particularly my fellow officers in the Britain-Palestine all-party group and in Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East, including the mover of the motion, my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who has campaigned on this issue for decades rather than years. We have heard good speeches from Members on both sides of the House, particularly the right hon. Members for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) and for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames).

This is not just a debate within this House: tens of thousands of people marched against the invasion of Gaza; we have seen mobilisations through the trade union movement and through the Palestine solidarity campaign; and we have heard that distinguished diplomats —Sir Vincent Fean, our most recent consul in Jerusalem has been mentioned—have written powerfully in this cause recently. Let us not forget the Jewish and Israeli groups, particularly the Israeli civil society groups such as Breaking the Silence, Peace Now and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which, under a great deal of pressure from their Government now, continue to campaign. But above all it is the British people who have taken up this cause, with more than 50,000 e-mails sent to MPs over the past two or three weeks.

I think that the British people have been on the same sort of journey as the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) described—it is certainly true of the Labour movement—from being very sympathetic to Israel as a country that was trying to achieve democracy and was embattled, to seeing it now as a bully and a regional superpower. That is not something I say with any pleasure, but since the triumph of military Zionism and the Likud-run Governments we have seen a new barbarism in that country. We have seen it in the Lebanon invasion, in the attack on the Mavi Marmara and the flotilla, and, above all, in the three attacks on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, Operation Cast Lead—

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the message sent from the British Parliament tonight will also be noted by the American Government and the American people, and that although our influence may not be strong directly on Israel, our relationship with America enables us to use its influence with Israel also to convey that sense of horror?

[Mr Slaughter]

I agree with my hon. Friend; I think this will be exactly as the vote in Syria was last year.

As I was saying, Operation Protective Edge, Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defence have all been, despite how the names sound, attacks by a major military power on a civilian community. I have heard two views in opposition to the motion. The first is from people who have no intention of ever recognising the state of Palestine—unfortunately they include the leadership of Israel at the moment. This view used to come just from people such as Ariel Sharon, but now it comes from Naftali Bennett, the Minister with responsibility for the economy, Avigdor Liberman, the Foreign Minister, and the Prime Minister himself, Binyamin Netanyahu. Bennett has said, “I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state.” Those views are articulated publicly in Israel now because people are emboldened by their own actions and by the international community’s failure to do anything about them.

Who can defend settlement building—the colonisation of another country? We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil. I disagree fundamentally with the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who said that Gaza was no longer under occupation. It is under occupation; the life is squeezed out of it daily from land, sea and air. Anybody who has visited the west bank and not come back thinking that it is an apartheid system has their eyes closed. The daily indignities suffered by the Palestinian people there would make many people rise in rebellion, and what we have there is a strong movement for peace, led by President Abbas.